left school. Niebuhr seems also to have forgotten that Martial has fellow culprits to keep him in countenance. Horace has committed the same decided blunder; for he gives us, as a pure iambic line, "Minacis aut Etrusca Porsenæ manus. "" Silius Italicus has repeatedly offended in the same way, as when he says, "Cernitur effugiens ardentem Porsena dextram ;" and again, "Clusinum vulgus, cum, Porsena magne, jubebas." A modern writer may be content to err in such company. Niebuhr's supposition that each of the three defenders of the bridge was the representative of one of the three patrician tribes is both ingenious and probable, and has been adopted in the following poem. HORATIUS. A LAY MADE ABOUT THE YEAR OF THE CITY CCCLX. 1. LARS PORSENA of Clusium By the Nine Gods he swore 2. East and west and south and north Shame on the false Etruscan 3. The horsemen and the footmen From many a stately market-place; Which, hid by beach and pine, 4. From lordly Volaterræ, Where scowls the far-famed hold Piled by the hands of giants For god-like kings of old; From seagirt Populonia, Whose sentinels descry Sardinia's snowy mountain-tops Fringing the southern sky; 5. From the proud mart of Pisa, 6. Tall are the oaks whose acorns Fat are the stags that champ the boughs Beyond all streams Clitumnus Is to the herdsman dear; Best of all pools the fowler loves The great Volsinian mere. 7. But now no stroke of woodman Grazes the milk-white steer; 8. The harvests of Arretium This old men shall reap; This year young boys in Umbro This year, the must shall foam Round the white feet of laughing girls, Whose sires have marched to Rome. 9. There be thirty chosen prophets, The wisest of the land, Who alway by Lars Porsena Both morn and evening stand: Evening and morn the Thirty Have turned the verses o'er, Traced from the right on linen white By mighty seers of yore. 10. And with one voice the Thirty To Clusium's royal dome, And hang round Nurscia's altars The golden shields of Rome.' For aged folk on crutches, And women great with child, And sick men borne in litters And troops of sun-burned husbandmen 15. And droves of mules and asses And endless flocks of goats and sheep, That creaked beneath their weight Of corn-sacks and of household goods, Choked every roaring gate. 16. Now, from the rock Tarpeian, They sat all night and day, 17. To eastward and to westward Hath wasted all the plain; 18. I wis, in all the Senate, There was no heart so bold, Uprose the Fathers all; In haste they girded up their gowns, And hied them to the wall. |